12 bers may visit with ladies between the acts; its entrance is carefully screened off, so that none of the pretty creatures can intrude on the stags. Ladies can sit in the omnibus box only at Saturday matinees; other times they just have to sit somewhere else. There are lots of other club usages, all rather complicat- ed; we seem to have forgotten them. President is a man named Strong, vice-president a man named Zeller, secre- tary-treasurer, a man named ::vIoore. Nalnes on the roster now fall a little short of the pres- tige of the parterre box- holders. Outstanding in the memories of the members are a Mr. Terrill and a Mr. Beach. Mr. Terrill nrver listened to the music; just paced up and down the club- room, grimly smoking black cigars. :\1 r. Beach, on the other hand, used to fin- agle a seàt in the front row of the box when Emma Eames sang, and raptur- ously throw a bunch of violets at her feet as she took her bows. ,; .. 'J .; t ::: = f f . ____.. E..:::--.!;....:"' . .. J. . . 1i . ." 4 , . .'\ -.......;... ---.....:.; ,.::.k ... -:?- Tiny Farce A LUCKY, lucky friend of ours was sitting in a hotel lobby one afternoon, and overheard, from the larger and sterner of two old ladies who passed near him, this remark: "All I know is, she wasn't under the bed when J . h " Ie went In t ere. Tick, T ock T HIS publication's draughty new offices overlook Times Square, and consequently command a fine view of the Paramount cloçk. \Ve've had quite a time with that clock, one war and an- other, during the past few months. Since we took to watching it, it has stopped completely once, and was reset by the absorbing process of having its hands moved round and round; once was lit up long before it got dark, and another time didn't light up when it was dark; has had its hands lighted and its dial dark; has had its dial lighted and its hands dark; and was two minutes fast on New Year's Eve. We finally went over to the Paramount Building, muttering, and told the girl in the su- perintendent's office that we wanted to talk with somebody about the clock. "What's the matter with the clock?" she said. "Nothing," we said craftily. "V{ e just want to talk about it." "If nothing's the matter with it, why do you want to talk about it?" she asked reasonably. Finally we were referred to a Mr. C. M. Jones, the Seth Thomas Clock Company's tower-clock man, who travels all over the country, just fix- ing tower clocks. \Ve spent a month or so trying to get in touch with him (we were in dead earnest, you see). One time Mr. Jones would be in East Orange, fixing a clock, and another time he'd be in Ox- ford, 0 hio, fixing a clock. Once he was sick, and so would we have been. \Vhen W finally got hold of :M r. Jones, who is a small, delib- erate man, he smiled a little smile and told us that the Paramount clock isn't a particu- larly bad actor, as large clocks go. It is upset by sleet and wind, as all big out- door clocks are, and in addition there is a curious up draught on the Broadway side of the Paramount Building, but it worries through in what Mr. Jones con- siders a creditable way. It's the best-il- luminated clock in the world, too; an earnest little group of horologists once made a world wide study and decided that. The lights used to be on an auto- Inatic switch that roughly followed the seasons-early in winter, late in sum- mer-but after the first year hand switches were substituted. They found that by burning the lights during a snow or sleet storm they could keep ice from forming on the hands. Mr. Jones thinks that when the lights are erratic, it's just some body fooling with the switches. Y\Then you see somebody working on the dial 9n a bosun's chair, he's probably re- placing a burned-out bulb. The lighting bill for the clock is equivalent to that of a hundred average three-rOOlTI apart- ments in New York. [t's twenty-five feet in diameter, the third largest clock in New Yark and vicinity, runner-up to the Colgate and the Metropolitan Life clocks. Mr . Jones said he had heard of an even larger clock in Scotland, a sixty-foot one, but he says seeing is be lieving. It costs the Paramount Building twenty-six hundred dollars a year to keep up the clock. This includes cur- rent, new bulbs, steeplejacks, and the repair con tract with the Seth Thomas people. \Ve think it's time the Para- ../ ( \ '. - ?:;. - -,- FEßRlIARY 2. 2., 1 9 3 b mount Building got some thanks for its trouble and expense. Thank you, Paramount Building. Billet-Do'ltx A N impoverished gentleman re- 11 ceived a \Vestern Union telegram early last week. The first thing that met his eye as he opened the envelope was a pink-and-blue folder which had on it a plump Cupid, and the words "You'll make an impression with V a]- entine greetings by \Vestern Union. . . as true as Cupid's dart." Then he read the telegram: "DOCTOR LEWIS ATTOR- NEY PROCEEDING LEGALLY UNLESS FIFTY DOLLARS PAID FEBRUARY FOUR- TEENTH.)) iVo.896 I F you should get on the right coach of a certain I.R. T. local train that runs every day between South Ferry and 137 th Street, you would encounter Mr. Robert V. Costello, subway guard No. 896. Mr. Car] B. Eimer, an at- torney, thus encountered Mr. Costello by lucky chance some twenty-five years ago. (Mr. Costello has been riding up and down all these years, on one run or another.) It was a lucky chance for r. Eimer, because he was a student at Columbia University way back then, and on this particular morning he was behind in his Livy assignment. The sub- way guard saw the young man scowling over the paragraphs of the Roman his- torian and he approached him, between stations. "Hard going?" asked Costel- I " PI ". d E . " L ' I k o. enty, sal Imer,. et s 00 at it," said the subway guard. Eimer handed him the book and-"\'That's troubling you?" asked the guard. The student pointed out the passage. The subway guard translated it for him. Read it right off. "Livy!" said the guard. "Y ou ought to read Livy at sight. Now, take Horace. . ." \\1 e'd heard about that incident (the awed Mr. Eimer wrote the papers a letter on the subject), and others some- "Vvhat like it. As a result we've been un Mr . Costello's elusive trail for years. Recently we got in touch with Mr. Eimer and he said yes, he'd run into Costello since the day of the miracle- saw him, in fact, about four years ago. Mr. Costello at that time was studying Erse between stations. Usually, he sim- ply ponders, and remembers, and lets 1 . f h " A . d " sonorous Ines 0 t e enel run through his mind, but now and then he whips out a book to see the printed word